Hailstones bounced off the car windscreen as we rushed
to get milk this weekend.
The supermarket was crowded with panic buyers.
Most essentials had flown off the shelves.
Contrary to what many people think around the
world, the city of Muscat does receive heavy rain a few times in a year and
people even die by drowning in the wadis or riverbeds.
Muscat and other towns in Oman were battered during
the Super cyclone Gonu in 2007 which had claimed many lives and damaged
property. Since then, there are warnings
given when there is any rough weather forecasted in Oman.
.....
It was the newspapers who first announced that this would
be a stormy weekend. A weekend here is Friday and Saturday.
There were also text warnings from the Ministry
followed by text warnings from the company.
We immediately stuffed the lower parts of the
French windows with old towels and bedding material. Marnie, our Australian
friend, whose family lived in this house before us, has warned us to do so.
.....
Vidya and Anna had a play date at our house and
the girls were quite shaken by the lightning and the thundershowers.
The cats huddled under the car. We pushed in
some dry towels to make them a cosy nest and made sure they had food and water.
.....
There were no newspapers during the weekend.
Binu posted pictures and videos on Facebook and
kept us up-to-date with the happenings around the city. The visual images told
stories about the plight of people and cars which were out in the open during
the storm. There was a man rowing his makeshift boat made from a big vessel. An
Omani girl had collected hailstones in a large plate. A car had crumpled under
a fallen tree.
.....
When the storm brewed again at night, I
pushed aside the curtains and wondered how my child could sleep peacefully
through all this.
She saw a huge puddle in the front courtyard
the next morning.
We squelched our feet in the muddy islands and
sailed paper boats.
In the evening, we shot pictures of clouds with
silver linings.
